


(people like me) don't live to feel

by tortoiseshells



Category: The Tick (TV 2017)
Genre: (the author does know a bit about opera; which is sadly relevant to this narrative), Bi Dorothy "Dot" Everest, Canon Typical Bad Language, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 02, The Author Is Not A Medical Professional, The Author Knows Almost Nothing About MMA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 17:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30008445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells
Summary: Dot and Overkill go undercover in an underground fighting ring. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
Relationships: Dorothy "Dot" Everest & Overkill, Dorothy "Dot" Everest/Overkill
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	(people like me) don't live to feel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SpaceCaseWriter13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceCaseWriter13/gifts).



For a man so goddamn set on being the strong, silent type, Overkill’s not really quiet _at all_ : he bangs the cabinets in the morning, looking for shredded wheat (at least, Dot thinks as she stares into her coffee like it might have an answer to a question she can’t even formulate yet, at least he’s stopped trying to leave Fo-Ham hidden behind the sacks of dried black beans and home-jarred tomato sauce from Lyddie on the ambulance that she hasn’t cracked into for fear of botulism poisoning); he grumbles about the detergent she uses (“lavender” or “fresh linen” hurts his carefully cultivated image as a tough, ruthless murderer…); his daily weapons-cleaning sessions are usually some twisted game of Jeopardy, except the questions are actually questions, and the answers either have to do with top-secret bullshit that will probably get her killed someday, or – _and this is the relief!_ – turning her years of patching people up as an EMT into a long list of ways to incapacitate, maim, or kill instead.

It’s kinda like having a housecat, Dot guesses. The feral kind you grab out of a dumpster because it’s missing an ear, covered in blood, and trying to murder the mailman, not the fluffy li’l cone-tailed babies you get from a breeder.

Maybe she should get a cat?

Anyway. Overkill isn’t as quiet as he thinks he is – until he goes stealth mode (like he is now, apparently) and drops the fucking _Times_ right in front of her, with an item in the Classifieds circled in red marker.

“I thought you were in the shower?” Dot mops the green sludge that’s mostly spinach and banana (and an entire pharmacy’s worth of supplements) off the table. Without precognition kicking in, her super-reflexes apparently only extend to destroying her own breakfast.

“I wasn’t.”

“The water’s running.”

“It’s a good cover,” he says, like this is the most obvious thing in the world.

_He’s paranoid for a reason_ , Dot tells herself silently. They’re good reasons; she’s nearly been killed by a few of them, but there’s only so much sympathy she can muster on three hours of bruised sleep and half a mug of coffee. Out loud, she reads: “UnCLE seeks nieces and nephews to resolve family argument.” The address is pretty close to the waterfront, but, hey. Welcome to the city. When you live on an island, the waterfront’s everywhere.

“We’ve gotta check it out.”

“We’re policing spelling and grammar now?”

Overkill grunts. Maybe it’s dismissal, maybe it’s him murdering a laugh.

(She got him to laugh just last week – war story from her time as an EMT, what else? – and she was so surprised by the sound she’d dropped the bowl of popcorn and had to spend the next five minutes picking it out of the couch cushions. There was still some in her hair, somehow, when she woke up curled into the arm of the couch, clutching a pillow, and her not-roommate-roommate was nowhere to be found.)

“U – n – C – L – E,” he spells out, “Underground Combat League Extraordinary.”

“Okay,” says Dot. This sounds like that movie, but probably less Alicia Vikander. Still. _Combat_. There’s possibilities there. “What is it?”

“An illegal fight club. DB’s picked up chatter that the Verdi gang is planning to use the next fight to move enough ketamine to knock out the next twenty years’ Belmont wannabes.”

_The Verdi Gang_. Everyone in this damn city’s got a gimmick these days. As far as Dot’s been able to tell, the Verdi Gang’s called that because they all wear elaborate masks and Hamish Duncan Morag McCleod, the kingpin, once sang Count Anckarström in Verdi’s _Un ballo in maschera_ to at least moderate acclaim at the Cosmopolitan … at least before the old Yellow Brick Brewery Opera House got knocked over to make way for AEGIS’s new digs.

(Honestly? As far as supervillain origin stories go, she kind of likes “frustrated opera star seeks revenge for the destruction of his artistic home and to raise funds for new one”. Like _The Phantom of the Opera_ , but with less creepy stalking of naïve Swedish sopranos and more molly.)

“So we’re gonna stop it.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re going in the ring and I’m gonna show up, bet on you, and then we stop the deal and bring it down?”

“No.”

Overkill drops into the chair across the table, and there’s a look that on a less-Overkill type person might be sly amusement. But it’s Overkill, so he just looks … _Overkill-y_. Frustration and fine-tuned rage and the grim joy of being the worst thing in the darkest part of the woods – and, right now, that weird thrill he gets at knowing something the precog doesn’t. And a far-away look at the cabinets. Probably wondering where the shredded wheat is.

“Okay?”

“I’m too recognizable. Those lowlifes know who I am and they’ll piss themselves before we get anywhere. _You’re_ going in the ring.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You,” he says, “You’re a Category, you’re precog, you’ve been training in Krav Maga for eighteen years –”

“How do you know how old I am?” This is a stupid question. One, Overkill is _over_ -prepared, and definitely read her AEGIS file cover to cover. Multiple times. He can probably quote it. Two, that’s the kind of information that they theoretically know about each other (like his first name is Esteban and he’s honest-to-god ticklish, or that she’s got a knock-off Giv Elgren tattooed in her left hip – that she’s inked at all is a conversation she’s never having with Mom, no matter how selectively observant they all are – framed by a ribbon that’s _totally_ not covering up her ex, Maria’s name, not at all) but that they have agreed to ignore.

(Like the time that both of them were somewhere past ‘buzzed’ but before ‘really fucking drunk’ and – _nothing_ happened, but in a very not-nothing way.)

“– They don’t know you yet, Dot. You’re the perfect man for the job.”

She doesn’t smile – not quite, but she picks up the _Times_ and rereads the item in the Classifieds. _Resolve a family argument_. Illegal fight club.

She likes that _yet_ of his, Dot decides, swigging her now-cold coffee. They’re gonna know her name. All right, she _is_ smiling – feeling a little like a feral cat now, like she’s ready get more than a few swipes in.

“You wanted to rattle some cages,” Overkill says, and Dot thinks back to the first time he broke into her apartment, “Let’s go rattle them.”

* * *

They need a plan. Overkill’s got the training down cold (and she’s got the bruises to prove it) but neither of them wants to go in blind. He heads off to talk intelligence and strategy with Dangerboat; Dot decides to talk to her own people about the Verdi Gang and the illegal underground fighting ring.

“Technically,” Arthur says over the phone, sounding like he’s talking around a sandwich. Dot gets hungry immediately. “Technically, so long as this UnCLE league is amateur, it’s not actually illegal.”

“It’s just UnCLE. “League” is already in it,” she replies, absent-mindedly, as she rifles through her fridge for anything that’s not six-day old pad thai or one of three jars of Claussen Kosher Dills that each only have a single half-pickle left. Note to self: dumping the brine down the drain isn’t _that_ hard, and she’s never going to get around to reusing it for keeping carrots and radishes like Maria did. Besides, Walter’s been looking for new containers to keep his eye bolts separate from his j bolts separate from his eye lags.

That’s probably a better second life for a pickle jar than the 60-odd percent of glass in recycling containers that doesn’t get recycled, she thinks. Hanging out in Walter’s _totally-just-a-garden-shed-not-at-all-a-field-operative-lair_ garden shed.

“Uh-huh.” Her brother clears his throat.

There’s more noise on the other end of the line, like static or like her brother’s going through a stack of paper.

“Anyway. It’s not illegal, so I was thinking that if it _was_ legal, there’d be some kind of paper trail: insurance, mostly. But it’s been considered an amateur sport competition for twenty-two years now, and the state doesn’t regulate that, because it’s too expensive for them. So if UnCLE isn’t insuring its fighters or hiring medics above-board – which it doesn’t have to – there’s nothing for me to find.”

“Okay,” says Dot, who (come to think of it) didn’t entirely remember what she’d asked Arthur to find in the first place.

“I could ask Veranda? Veranda Lee at AEGIS?”

She knows what Overkill is going to say about opsec. She also knows Arthur has a hopeless crush, a time-suck of a job that has either an 80% or a 66.667% death rate (historically, and depending on whether or not you count Onward/Midnight as one of the original Flag Five, which is a topic of conversation she’s never bringing up with Overkill again unless she needs a migraine), and a not-a-roommate-roommate that’s even weirder and needier than her not-a-roommate-roommate.

“Go ahead. Say hey for me.”

She _is_ a good older sister. Sometimes.

* * *

A few days later, Dot finds an envelope slipped under her door, containing the complete chain of ownership of the alleged warehouse that she’s hopefully going to be breaking some noses in, medical claims for some of the suspected amateur fighters (HIPAA? AEGIS doesn’t know her.), and a thumb drive with a filmed version of McCleod’s definitive performance in _Un ballo in maschera_ – all tabulated and color-coded for ease of decryption and analysis.

Dot sends Veranda two cartons of the almond cookies Arthur says she likes, and – because Dot’s finally had a useful presentiment about the world for the first time in eight days – the recipe for Bubbe’s rugelach before Veranda can ask.

* * *

Speaking of opsec …

“I’ve heard,” says Walter, bringing two cups of coffee and the biggest, butteriest, most _perfect_ croissant she’s ever seen outside of the AEGIS breakroom to the coffee-shop table, “That you’re planning on some late nights, next week.”

Dot buries her frown in the coffee mug – which is also hot, unsweetened, and _perfectly_ bitter – and silently upbraids her superpowers for not warning her she was walking into an ambush. A very tasty, and (glancing across the unironically uncool formica table-top) somewhat-concerned ambush. How does Walter even know? One of the mysteries of the universe, like how he knows every single Scrabble-approved two-letter word.

“I am,” she says. Since the eighty-seven car pile-up in the Hamlin Tunnel that was that _Sudden Emergence of Her Hitherto Unsuspected Powers – Lobstercules, Refugee of Atlantis – Return of the Duke – The Great Aegis Robbery_ _Disaster_ , she’s trying to be more open with her family. Given that her family contains a retired AEGIS operative, a current member of the Flag Five (and his weird not-a-roommate-roommate), and Mom, who’s got Atlantis on speed-dial – this is a policy with definite positives and drawbacks. They’re all … good. _Lawful good_.

She’s, well. Something else. At least for now.

“Sounds exhausting,” Walter says.

“Had later nights on the ambulance.”

“I know.” Her stepdad gives her a smile that’s part paternal worry, part paternal pride. If Tick were here, he’d be grandstanding about the duality of man, probably. “Do you need more KT tape? It’s only been twenty-six days since Pallisade Street –”

Which, officially, she had nothing to do with. Walter’s omniscience strikes again.

“–and you’ll need to be careful of your anterior talofibular and calcaneofibular ligaments, even if it was a minor sprain. Chronic instability may be … difficult in your line of work.”

She smiles grimly at her stepdad, promising that she’s set. Paramedic, remember?

Walter nods. “And you’ll have to be careful of how you’re compensating.” He lays out several suggestions for making up for her kicks not having the same power, one or two of which even Overkill hadn’t mentioned.

They talk about non-oil-based paints and baseball after that, since Dot is repainting her apartment (after Overkill stripped it to the studs, for the sake of digging out any bugs and installing more hideaways for sharp objects, and then he had failed _hard_ at replacing the drywall, necessitating her trading two bottles of añejo tequila (that okay, sure, she didn’t ‘ _buy_ ’ so much as ‘ _liberate from an old Pyramid Gang hangout before the cops got there because they would have been fucking wasted in the evidence lockup_ ’) and six months’ worth of back-alley doctoring to Inez and Minnie, from her old roller derby club, to help reinstall) – and baseball, because neither of them really gets it, but it’s as good an excuse for grilling and beer as anything else.

Eventually, Dot’s phone lights up, blaring Billy Joel – Dangerboat’s been messing with his designated ringtone again. “Downeaster Alexa” – _very funny, DB_.

“Duty calls?”

Dot nods, and Walter simply smiles and tidies up the table. “Take care of your ankle, Dot. Let us know when you get home?”

“Tell Mom I’ll call tomorrow, okay?” She hugs her stepdad, and hurries out the door with her phone jammed between her shoulder and her ear, fumbling with her gloves. “Okay, DB, what is it?”

* * *

The day of the night of the fight, Dot jitters around her apartment like (as she’s heard Ty Rathbone say) a gerbil on a hotplate. Her alarm goes, but she’s already out of bed, doing her ankle-stretches and skipping rope. Not _dancing_ – this isn’t do-or-die, make-or-break, life-defining stuff. This is just prepping to get the shit kicked out of her, and do a little shit-kicking in turn. The only difference is, people are going to be cheering for her – and hopefully not in a metaphorical way.

(She gave Overkill fifty bucks to put on her. That asshole better not bet against her. _He wouldn’t._ )

The man in question isn’t anywhere to be seen, and she tells herself _this is all according to the plan_ , that she wasn’t waiting ( _wanting_ ) to hear a key in the lock – or, more likely, a barely-there rattle of the fire escape, and the whisper of the living room window being drawn open. He’s not on the lease, he’s not her roommate. He still sleeps easier on Dangerboat, sometimes, even after all the sweeping and debugging and weapon-stashing. It’s safer there.

Dot doesn’t begrudge him that – except there’s a part of her that _does_. Maybe. They’re … partners? As much by chance as by choice, at first, but they’ve been sticking together. AEGIS doesn’t officially know she’s a Category, but he does. Overkill tried (against his will, but) to put a .50 caliber between her eyes, twice, but he feels _safe_ in some ridiculous way that she doesn’t want to examine too much. She _knows_ him, because the same day that killed her father killed Straight Shooter; she sees all her grief and her rage and that ugly bone-deep feeling that _she wants to hurt what hurts her_ when she looks at him. Second lives, second chances – endings that aren’t endings, that being good isn’t always being nice as they struggle to move the universe towards justice with two hands.

What does he see when he looks at her?

_Fuck_. Now’s not the time to be mooning around her apartment like a girl with a crush, or contemplating the great philosophical questions of _ends_ and _means_. She’s thirty-three, dammit, and a kind of professional. Dot drinks her breakfast smoothie, pounds her water. Dot dyes her hair a streaky black in her bathroom sink, partly because it’s good security, not looking the same all the time; partly (mostly) because she wants to see how it looks. While it sets, Dot watches Monty Don counsel adorable little families on turning their tiny backyards into green marvels full of useful herbs and extraordinarily useless ferns, wonders what Mom and Walter’s plans are for the backyard, now that they’ve ripped those weird, half-dead pine things out. Walter’s been thinking about colony collapse and bee populations recently; maybe they’ll put in coneflowers? Bee balm?

She rinses the excess dye out after 45 minutes, and ruins an old college t-shirt wrapping it up on top of her head to dry. Rips up the dye box, sticks it in a bag to bring to Dangerboat to destroy.

Skips rope again, for another while, after her hair’s dry – just enough to burn off the nerves, not enough to wear her out.

Finally, it’s sundown.

She hops the subway (and then some) to get where she’s going, smiling at the messages she gets when she emerges into the evening air. A couple boxing gloves emojis from Arthur, with a only slightly misspelled addendum from Tick urging her to not murder anyone; ‘good luck!’ from an AEGIS number that she hopes is Veranda Li’s; good wishes and a link to instructions on taping for an ankle injury from Walter. Mom hasn’t sent anything, but Dot guesses no one’s told her that she – or _Judy Denali_ (as stage names go, probably as useful in hiding her real identity as her little domino mask, but she’s got that weird _feral_ pride going: she wants them to know it’s her, Dot Everest, the daughter of Joel and Joan Everest. She saw her dad die and she came out _really fucking mad_.) – is planning to throw some punches in a totally ethical secret amateur fight club, and then, if she’s lucky, halt the movement of more than a few kilos of Special K.

Honestly? Dot takes a deep breath, two lungfuls of city air that smells like piss and gasoline and sea breeze, and rolls her shoulders underneath the heavy leather biker jacket she totally didn’t steal from Overkill’s closet. She’s tough. She’s smart. She’s got backup.

It feels good to be back in the woods.

… at least until she remembers who she’s about to go several rounds with.

* * *

Overkill’s next to the ring when she saunters into it, doing her best to think “tiger” and not “cute and very delicious woodland creature” – he’s leaning up against the bars while he talks with the bookie, looking like a guy just off the construction site, from the scuffed up steel-toed boots to the high-vis tee under a dusty hoodie; just another guy looking for a good time and maybe to turn the days’ pay into a little more.

According to the cover, she’s the new girl in town, looking to make a splash; according to the cover, they don’t know each other.

Dot thinks (hopes?) that he looks a little too long at her, and not the kind of _I’ve-Made-A-Mistake_ Look that she’d gotten up close and personal with at the Pallsade Street Incident last month. Someone behind him wolf-whistles, and Dot, playing along with the act, winks and waves in that general direction.

_I’ve got it_ , she’s saying. _You do your part, I’ll do mine._

He nods. Dot lets herself smile – awkward around her mouth-guard, sure – but it’s a smile all the same.

The announcer bellows to be heard above the noise of the crowd: _Brunnhilde Jones!_ Known quantity, crowd favorite, a cool six-feet in her socks, with a face that’s clearly seen very little damage: all signs that had pointed, when Jones had come over and shook her hand in the makeshift locker room/infirmary, to her internal monologue of **_fuck fuck fuck FUCK!_** being absolutely right.

* * *

_Brunnhilde Jones_ – Real name: Delphinette Cirillo ( _Cirillo_ , DB had helpfully pointed out, was derived from the Greek for _lord_ , or _lordly_ , which was pretty fucking spot on for a woman who absolutely looked like she was going to carry Dot to Valhalla, and _not at all unsettling!_ ), dramatic soprano formerly employed by the Cosmopolitan Opera, noted co-star of Hamish Duncan Morag McCleod. Dot had no idea _what_ was happening in _Un ballo in maschera_ , and neither had Overkill, when they were collapsed onto her couch like Dali-clocks after another grueling sparring session, watching the recording, but they agreed Cirillo was very impressive while doing … whatever she was.

* * *

_Judy Denali!_ the announcer cries, to the jeers and cheers of the crowd. New challenger, fresh meat, _definitely_ not that tall, bouncing on the balls of her feet, knowing that the KT tape was gonna hold and weirdly focused on worrying about it anyway.

They bump their thin-gloved fists in the center of the ring, in the half-second of heavy quiet before the bell rings –

And then –

Brunnhilde’s going to start with a low blow, then go high around Dot’s block – she can see it, feel the pain streaking out like lightning bolts from her cheekbone and see the page in her long-ago textbooks: _zygomatic maxillary fracture_. Surgery, out of commission at least six weeks. What’s worse, there? The uselessness, or whatever her friends, her parents, and her _partner_ are going to say about how much real danger she can handle? She’s rather go back to open cardiac massages performed in the back of a screaming, jolting ambulance.

Her dramatic-soprano opponent, Dot thinks, watching the blow in her mind’s eye, really is going to put the _drama_ back in dramatic injuries –

So that’s a _no_ from her.

Dot skips back, away from the hard swing when it comes a few moments later, feeling the jolt in her ankle but she’s still in it. Brunnhilde follows. Dot continues to play defense – not just because there’s no fucking way she’s going to be able to take her opponent down, short of a miracle of precognition and a moment of sloppy form – but because playing for defense is playing for time. Overkill hasn’t given her the signal – he hasn’t found out who’s got the payload, who’s the buyer, what their plans are. They both know Delphinette Cirillo, alas Brunnhilde Jones, is both MacLeod’s chief muscle and the brains behind their operational security, so she’s gotta stay out of play as long as humanly possible.

Still. However fast Dot’s going? –

it’s not fast enough to avoid some pretty punishing blows to the gut, or one good punch to the face that tastes like blood and leaves her head ringing.

Dot spits out blood. _The crowd roars_. Dot thinks:

Brunnhilde’s a performer. That’s not a judgment; if Dot could hold a High C for a whole minute or more, wilting under stage lights and trussed up like Keira Knightley in every period drama since _Pirates_ , then she, too would be grandstanding to her heart’s content.

Dot sees Brunnhilde step back, bowing to the crowd like her third _encore_ – and gets a good kick in at the knees. Not enough to bring her opponent down for good, but enough to buy her a little more lee-way in the ring.

It goes on like this for about three more minutes – and then all Hell breaks loose.

Up in the stands, where she can’t see him, but _knows_ he’s there, there’s a fuss and rumble – the kind that’s _trouble_. **_Big trouble_** :

“Hey – aren’t you –?”

“Holy fuck, it’s fucking Overkill!”

Dot sees herself taking a dirty hit to the temple as she snaps up to see whatever the fuck Overkill’s done (or failed to do), and so when three seconds later comes, she doesn’t look – just ducks under the coming blow, twisting down to hammer Brunhilde with a kidney shot. The unfairly gorgeous former/current opera star goes down like a sack of brunette potatoes.

“Sorry!” she spits around her mouth guard, skidding out of the ring and into the real fight.

* * *

Before she knows it, they’re back on Dangerboat, less a little blood (Overkill), and about 15minutes worth of memories (her) –

Dot’s really not exaggerating “ _before she knows it_ ” – Just about the last clean memory she has, she flying-tackled a giant baritone in a Carnival mask who’d pulled _a fucking_ _Desert Eagle_ on Overkill, and only one of the two of them can dodge bullets.

Easy call to make there, really.

Both she and her mark went down in the scuffle, Dot hit the cold concrete floor and – then – ?

She was leaning against a dumpster in an alleyway, the taste of stomach acid and blood in her mouth, barely able to smell the salt-breeze and city-shit for the smoke, and Overkill’s blunt-edged voice telling her to keep counting, _goddammit, don’t pass out on me again!_ Dot lost track a few times – she thinks – on their scuttling, stealthy progress back to Dangerboat.

“That could have gone better,” Dot groans, holding an ice pack to the back of her head while Dangerboat _tut-tuts_ like a schoolteacher, and Overkill paces around, fussing (if Overkill can be said to _fuss_ , but the prodding at her expertly-packed gauze & taped-bandages – impatient as always, waiting for his body to catch up to his will – certainly _looks_ a lot like fussing to Dot) and grumbling while listening to the police-scanner chatter.

_Better_ is a matter of perspective. The Verdi gang’s deal went down in flames (like the rest of the warehouse, whoops. Veranda’s paperwork indicated it was insured, so she’s not losing any sleep.), but MacLeod and Brunnhilde/Delphinette Cirillo are still at large – though the Verdi gang’s going to have problems of their own, which will keep them out of Dot & Overkill’s hair for at least a couple weeks. Dot didn’t win her inaugural cage match, but she didn’t _lose_ either – not that anyone was going by regulations, but Dot’s pretty sure a match interrupted by a three-party gang brawl (itself interrupted by two Category vigilantes) would be a regulation draw. _Thanks kinda nice?_ Or maybe it’s not. Someone did get a hell of a blow in to the back of her skull, which – no fractures, only brief loss of consciousness, prognosis pretty good.

She’s only thrown up once or twice.

Wait –

Nope, three times.

Overkill trades her a warm, damp towel for the bucket she was holding between her knees, bringing that off who knows where. The toilet, probably. Aren’t toilets called ‘heads’ on boats? Shouldn’t she have asked DB about that before?

_Shit_. She’s got to get her mind on straight.

_Head on straight_.

Right.

Dot Everest wipes her face and mouth off, and probably not for the first time that night, thinks _I really, really hate brain injuries_. At least this is her first concussion. (She thinks.)

In a minute or so, Overkill comes back with a glass of water and a bottle of knockoff Advil, and a first aid kit that’s clearly seen better days – not surprising, considering how many people in the city seem to think he’s a walking, talking pincushion. It’s got tape and splints, so it’ll have to be good enough. It’s not like they can send DB to the Duane Read.

“Give me your hand, Dot.”

She assumes he means the one that was swelling up like a pomelo, so switches her grip on the ice-pack, and gingerly extends her right, still marked by the glove they practically had to cut off.

“Jammed,” she says, “My form was bad. I know.”

“Happens. It’ll be a week before you’re any good for the field.”

“That’s the problem with bones and ligaments,” Dot says around her hiss of pain, as Overkill begin to splint and tape. He pauses, so she treads lightly. Metaphorically. Overkill doesn’t – he always seems like he accepts what happened – what was done to him – only lashing when it gets in the way of the all-important **_mission_** – like Hobbes hijacking his sight, only a few months ago. But Dot’s drunk many a bottle of bourbon with him. _She knows him_. His name is Estaban, before it was Straight Shooter, before it was Overkill; he has a lousy poker face and every Britney Spears album hidden on one of his file drives and trust issues within trust issues within trust issues.

He told her to leave, when Hobbes was in his brain, because he didn’t want to kill her.

“The healing timetable is kind of a pain,” she finishes, with a shrug.

“It’s just a sprain.”

“Three.” Dot waggles her index finger, now a buddy-splint for the middle, while the other three remain stiff and swollen, “A week of ice and ibuprofen. At least it can pull double duty with managing the concussion.”

He scoffs, but there’s nothing harsh in it. Dot teases: “Not all of us can run on an infinite supply of military-grade uppers and indomitable will alone.”

“Nor should we.” DB swoops over from the other side of the room – which Overkill waves off with one of his friendlier grumbled ‘ _asshole_ ’s.

“I’ll be fine. Just gotta sleep it off, for the most part.” That’s a slight oversimplification, but it’s mainly true. There’s nothing but inactivity and ice for her hand, and there’s really nothing but regimented rest and low activity for the concussion. She’s a paramedic; she knows this stuff cold.

( _ha. ice, cold._ )

(She really hates brain injuries.)

If she could bury her head in her hands and sigh, she would – but one’s holding the ice to the back of her skull, and Overkill’s splinting the other with his usual brusque efficiency. Medical professionals are the worst patients, they say – so Dot sits back. Lets it happen.

It’s … kind of nice to not be the designated caretaker. The concussion she could do without, but – yeah. Someone else doing the patch-up is _nice_.

“That was a hell of a kick to the head you took,” Overkill says, after a period of completely characteristic silence, tearing off the last bit of tape. Dot wiggles her fingers again, but the bandaging job is solid. It’s kind of flattering to know she’s a good teacher about this kind of stuff.

Anyway. Focus. Blow to the head. _So that’s how it happened._ “That guy was going to shoot you.”

“Survived worse.”

“Yeah. I know.” _But you shouldn’t have to_.

Overkill works his jaw for a few moments, and checks – and rechecks – his work. Her hand. “It was unnecessary,” he grumbles, and then – “Thanks, Dot.”

* * *

The next day, Dot wakes up from an unintentional afternoon nap, feeling the evening breeze through her open window and something that smells a hell of a lot like tom yum.

“Where’s the bottle opener?” comes the familiar voice, just out of sight in the kitchen.

“I can’t drink right now!”

“Yeah. The soup’s for you,” Overkill says, setting the take-out bag on the coffee table, and dropping into the chair opposite the couch. She’d never have guessed he’d pulled a steak knife out of his shoulder about twenty hours ago. “Beer’s for me. It’s not twist-off. Where’s the bottle-opener?”

Dot sits up, and it’s only just a bit of a struggle. “Top of the fridge,” she says, “Get me a spoon?”

“You can’t reach the top of the fridge without a step stool.”

Good natured as possible, considering the headache _and_ the wave of hunger that’s quickly turning her hangry, Dot reminds him he left it up there.

He brings her the requested spoon when he comes back, and cracks into his own container of takeout while Dot queues up another episode of _Big Dreams, Small Spaces_.

( _You don’t even have a goddamn planter_ , Overkill complained once, probably the first time he lost a drunken bet and she got the remote.

_I might someday_ , she shot back. And even if she didn’t – well, it was nice to think about something other than the woods sometime, wasn’t it?)

They watch until she falls asleep on the couch, again.

* * *

Overkill’s gone when her alarm goes, but she’s honest-to-goodness tucked into her own bed, with water left out for her. Later still, Dot finds the bottle-opener in the silverware drawer when she goes looking for a knife.

**Author's Note:**

> For the sake of having a location in mind, I chose to believe that all the NY plates meant "The City" was New York City, despite any evidence to the contrary; it's still a different universe to ours, so the Lincoln Tunnel has become the Hamlin Tunnel, and the Metropolitan Opera has become the Cosmopolitan Opera. AEGIS's HQ probably wasn't built on top of an old opera house, but, before 'urban renewal' made the new Lincoln Center the Met's home base, it was further south, in a building "affectionately" called The Yellow Brick Brewery for its apparently utilitarian exterior.
> 
> I don't have a good reason for the Verdi gang, save that opera is Aesthetique & what is organized crime in _The Tick_ universe if not about Aesthetics and branding? I can only offer the usual excuse, which is "it seemed like a good idea at the time." :D
> 
> Title from Caroline Rose's "Blood on Your Bootheels" - which I freely admit I had on repeat in the background!
> 
> For [SpaceCaseWriter13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceCaseWriter13)/[theonlyredcar](https://theonlyredcar.tumblr.com/), the best co-conspirator, idea-bouncer-offer, and friend I could ask for - and whose OverDot fic, [Love is blind, but then again so am I](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19395577) was absolutely an inspiration for mine, and one of the reasons I watched _The Tick_ in the first place. Thanks for putting up with my endless bullshit parade, friend! <3


End file.
